Signed lozenge fabric camouflage aircraft fabric : Lance Corporal S A Turner, 10th Field Company Engineers AIF

Square section of fabric taken from the wing of German aeroplane which crashed and burnt in France. The fabric is printed in a lozenge pattern, with olive green, dark mustard brown and chestnut brown colour evident. The inscription on the obverse side reads 'Dear Edie, this is off a German aeroplane, it was brought down near us. It was on fire. We followed it and this is off one of the wings. The German in it was burnt to death. This will be a good souvenir for you. I am also sending a piece to ? Love Syd 1035? S Turner. Dimensions: 12 by 12 cm

This souvenir was recovered by l/Cpl Sydney Angel Turner of the 10th Fld Coy Engineers.
On fabric is marked "29 xxx 1918" the month being illegible.

Towards the middle 1916, Germany started to adopt pre-printed colour fabric for their aircraft, making use of repeating patterns of coloured polygons. Modern researchers have termed the material 'lozenge fabric'. By April 1917 the new fabric was in general use and the Siemens Schuckert Werke was instructed in its use.

Two main schemes schemes appear to have been adopted: a daylight and a night scheme. The daylight scheme made use of a dark cloour pattern for upper surfaces and the sides of fuselages, and a light pattern, to be used on the lower surfaces of wings and the bottom of fuselages. Despite this, there were deviations. The Albatros D.Va in the AWM collection, for instance, had the lower wings covered with plain and lozenge fabric, the wings being then painted in the previous camouflage pattern for plain covered aircraft, while the under surface of the upper wing was covered in light coloured five colour lozenge fabric. The AWM’s Pfalz D.XII had the light coloured pattern fabric on both the top and bottom surfaces of the lower wings. Other captured aircraft are reported having similar use of the fabric.